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Diversity, abundance and distribution characteristics of potential polyethylene and polypropylene microplastic degradation bacterial communities in the urban river
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Researchers conducted a 1,150-day experiment in an urban river to identify bacteria capable of degrading polyethylene and polypropylene microplastics. The study found two distinct groups of plastic-degrading bacteria, with many rare or low-abundance species in natural river biofilms that may serve as potential degraders, helping explain the slow breakdown rate of these common microplastics in waterways.
Carbon chain microplastics, polyethylene (PE), and polypropylene (PP) are the main types of refractory organics. Compared to heterochain microplastics, PE/PP degrading bacterial community and their distribution characteristics in natural rivers are unclear. In this study, the field in situ experiment and indoor enrichment experiment with PE/PP resin as only carbon sources were conducted for a total period of 1150 days. The microbial degradation of pure PE/PP resin was determined by SEM, FTIR, CLSM, GC-MS, and GPC. The Chao 1 index and Invsimpson index of the bacterial community significantly reduced after a series of incubation, demonstrating that the bacterial community was selectively enriched. Empirical core PE/PP degrading bacteria (C-bacteria) and resuscitated PE/PP degrading bacteria (R-bacteria) were screened based on the variation of the abundance of OTUs, and co-occurrence analysis displayed that C-bacteria presented higher betweenness centrality than R-bacteria. The higher abundance and diversity of R-bacteria in biofilms suggest the presence of many rare or low abundance bacteria in natural rivers that may be potential PE/PP degrading bacteria or PE/PP degrading bacteria to be activated, while the lower abundance and diversity of C-bacteria support the slow degradation rate of PE and PP in waters. Compared to the isolated and indicatory PE/PP degrading bacterial genera, the C-bacteria OTUs or genera enriched in this study displayed higher richness and abundance. Enriched PE/PP degrading bacteria occurred in all sampled sites of the Qinhuai River with higher abundance and standard betweenness centrality in sediments (averaging 0.01354 and 0.44421, respectively) than those in overlying water (averaging 0.00536 and 0.17571, respectively), while the highest abundance of degrading bacteria presented in the eutrophic sediments. Inorganic nitrogen was determined to be significantly correlated with the distribution of PE/PP degrading bacteria in sediments via redundancy analysis. This study provides a new perspective on the natural degradation potential of carbon chain microplastics by microbial communities in rivers.
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